Christine Stoddard

Before I became a haunted house performer, I thought having my face touched was one of the creepiest things imaginable. But it wasn't the eerie set music or the beheaded baby dolls that changed my definition of scary. It was what went on in the green room.

I eventually began to accept that truly being a feminist means embracing the idea of “my body, my choice” in all its incarnations. If I truly believe that women have the right to accessible birth control, the right to safe abortions, the right to consent to sex, and the right to make any decision regarding their own body, it also means I should believe women have the right to decide to never, ever have sex. There are two things that made it hard for me to come to that realization: virgin-shaming and purity culture.

Immigrants are pushed out of their home countries due to social, political, or economic forces beyond their control — poverty, genocide, wartime.... I doubt many Salvadorans of my mother's generation fled El Salvador to go “find themselves.”

Plenty of Americans have names that don't convey their full cultural background because, at this point, so many of us are mixed up. How could our names possibly communicate all that we are? But when the time comes for an interracial, interethnic, international couple to name their child, they're often faced with a political decision.

I scrolled through my Instagram feed to catch a photo of a friend’s first tattoo. It was an abstract design that paid homage to her wedding venue, a distinctive historic site in her home state. The tattoo seemed sweet at first, but then I read the photo caption. My friend had gotten inked to honor the child she lost in miscarriage.

I tapped the razor on the side of the sink and inspected my smooth legs for any missed spots. Then I rinsed the blade, washed my hands, and put on my outfit: a long-sleeved black top, a knee-length denim skirt, tall black boots, and a silver dragon necklace for good measure.

[CN: mention of intimate partner violence] Patsy Cline sang with such a beautiful range of emotion because she had experienced so many ups and downs in her own life.

Indigenous people throughout the world already face so many challenges; they don’t need non-Indigenous people appropriating their cultures and championing family lore as fact. The genocide of Indigenous people is an ongoing travesty throughout the world

The moon sauntered out from a curtain of clouds, whispering, “All things must end.”

I recently spent some time in Freddie Gray's West Baltimore neighborhood asking local women for their thoughts on police reform. I was curious because, as the Freddie Gray trials drag on, I can't help but feel that city and state officials are failing to ask everyday people what needs to change.